Bathroom: Plumbing

We can do demolition and we can install the fixtures. We'll pay someone to do everything else. What's that? Seven thousand dollars for plumbing? Yeah....we can do the plumbing.

We've found that when we do things ourselves, especially when it's the first time, some money is lost on mistakes. It also takes a lot longer, but in the end, we still come out ahead on the pocketbook. The plumbing was HARD. Not because plumbing itself is hard, but because it's difficult to read and interpret the plumbing code and to even know the names of all the pieces to buy. Nick figured all of this out! We have a friend who is an engineer and designs waste water systems and he looked over our plans, but we still had a couple hard knocks along the way. The demolition was okay--we rented a clay pipe cutter to cut the heavy cast iron waste stack and removed it in 18" sections. There was only one bad incident where a husband got hit in the face by the crank arm of the tool. It's hard to say who was at fault.

Old waste stack.	Sink drain. Gross!

Once we had the new pipes in, Nick plugged all the openings in the system (connections to sink/tub, and the drains) in preparation for the cover inspection. He then climbed atop the roof and stuck the garden hose into the vent pipe to fill the entire system with water. This practice is how the inspector determines whether there are any leaks. We felt reasonably confident in our work. However, when the inspector arrived, he pointed out that we had the wrong sized pipe on the tub drain (a detail that is buried in a FOOTNOTE in the code), and the cast iron venting in the attic that we had not removed was leaking at the joints.The inspector said it was up to us whether we wanted to replace the cast iron in the attic. It wasn't bad enough that he had great concern, but we don't take the easy way out.

New waste stack.

At 6pm on a week night, we headed to the hardware station to rent a clay pipe cutter again. Our goal was to fix the tub drain and replace the waste stack venting in the attic so that the inspector could return the following day so that the other hired work would remain on schedule. Replacing the tub drain pipe was no easy matter. The pipes are glued together and a change requires cutting the connector out and putting new pieces in. It takes quite a bit of thought to figure out how to reconfigure the arrangement with new pieces to make up for the part that had to be cut out.

It was probably 9:30pm before we even started on the cast iron in the attic. I go to bed between 10pm and 11pm and stop functioning at midnight. It seemed like such an easy task, but the hours ticked away unfairly. I knew that if I stopped helping, Nick would justify going to bed with a plan to get up early to finish the job, undoubtedly miscalculating how much time it would take. My eyes crossed and I felt nauseated. It was 90 degrees in the attic and we dripped with sweat. "If I can make it to bed by 11, I'll be fine," I reasoned. Eleven came and went. "If I get to bed by 1, I can get the Golden Five and I'll be fine." At 2am, nothing mattered anymore. I could respond to instruction but was useless with independent thought. We finished our work before 3 and I passed out in bed, setting my alarm clock later than usual.